t leave this room until we
know who you are!"

And he covered him with his pistol.

"Fool!" exclaimed Bellward who had stopped on the threshold of
the secret door, "do you want to trap the lot of us! Tell him,
Minna," he said to Mrs. Malplaquet, "and for Heaven's sake, let
us be gone!"

Mrs. Malplaquet stood up.

"This is Basil Bellward," she said, "see, he's wearing the ring I
gave him, a gold snake with emerald eyes! And now," she cried,
raising her voice shrilly, "before we go, kill that man!"

And she pointed at Desmond.

Bellward had seized her by the arm and was dragging her through
the opening in the shed when a shrill whistle resounded from the
garden. Without any warning Mortimer swung round and fired
point-blank at Desmond. But Desmond had stooped to spring at the
other and the bullet went over his head. With ears singing from
the deafening report of the pistol in the confined space, with
the acrid smell of cordite in his nostrils, Desmond leapt at
Mortimer's throat, hoping to bear him to the ground before he
could shoot again. As he sprang he heard the crash of glass and a
loud report. Someone cried out sharply "Oh!" as though in
surprise and fell prone between him and his quarry; then he
stumbled and at the same time received a crashing blow on the
head. Without a sound he dropped to the ground across a body that
twitched a little and then lay still.

* * * * *

Somewhere in the far, far distance Desmond heard a woman
crying--long drawn-out wailing lamentations on a high, quavering
note. He had a dull, hard pain in his head which felt curiously
stiff. Drowsily he listened for a time to the woman's sobbing, so
tired, so curiously faint that he scarcely cared to wonder what
it signified. But at last it grated on him by its insistency and
he opened his eyes to learn the cause of it.

His bewildered gaze fell upon what seemed to him a gigantic,
ogre-like face, as huge, as grotesque, as a pantomime mask.
Beside it was a light, a brilliant light, that hurt his eyes.

Then a voice, as faint as a voice on a long distance telephone,
said:

"Well, how are you feeling?"

The voice was so remote that Desmond paid no attention to it. But
he was rather surprised to hear a voice reply, a voice that came
from his own lips, curiously enough:

"Fine!"

So he opened his eyes again to ascertain the meaning of this
phenomenon. This time the ogre-like face came into focus, and
D